Friday, September 17, 2010

Nail Design number six is the Shooting Star...or rather, the Shooting Star(s), depending on how many nails are painted with this design. But it's a relatively simple and fast design, so painting all ten nails (or how many you choose to), will be a breeze!

Aren't shooting stars just magical? Or airplanes if you live in the city and can't see the stars...whatever you see shooting across the sky at night. Either way it makes for a pretty picture and a fun nail design!

image from energytalkradio.wordpress.com

So, gather your needed nail supplies for this.

You'll need a clear polish. I used Nailene's Acrylic Strong Protecting Topcoat because it's the only non-quick dry top coat I have (and I was lucky enough to win this from Babbling Brooke in one of her fabulous giveaways!). I suggest a non-quick drying formula, because quick drying top coats tend to have some shrinkage, and I'm not sure if that will become a problem when we are trying to set our star jewels.

Next up, the base color. I used Funky Dunkey by OPI as it is a medium toned purple creme polish that goes on smoothly and has complete coverage in two coats.

To complement the purple creme background I used Mad as a Hatter by OPI because it has some purple in the glitter along with other colored glitter pieces. For a more dramatic look here, I would recommend a dense multi-glitter which both polishes from OPI's Alice in Wonderland Collection are. If I wanted a blue background, I would have used Absolutely Alice by OPI as the shooting star's tail to complement a blue background, but I wanted a more purple-hued effect here. Feel free to use whatever polish you want to give you whatever effect you feel represents the tail of a shooting star.

And finally, the star jewels. I picked these up at my local beauty supply store for $1.99US and the little pack came with over 20, but if you look closely, you can see the stars have six points. I don't mind with the overall effect of the whole nail design, but if you have a preference, or whatever is easier to come by in nail jewels, feel free to use them!

Step One is simply laying down the base color you have chosen. Whether it be the purple pictured above, or any other color of the rainbow.

After you have let the base color dry completely, use two strips of tape for each nail. Take the first strip and lay it vertically over the nail where the edge you will paint against is in the direct center line of the nail. (In the picture above, I was painting my left hand, so the first strip of tape was laid down on the nail so the right side of the tape piece was in the vertical center of my nail - or as close as could be!)

Using the second strip of tape, lay it at an angle so the point of where the two pieces of tape meet will be a little higher than the center point of your nail (or wherever you have decided to place the star on your nail, keeping in mind that when the star is placed down it will cover that meeting point). Also think about how much glitter polish you want to cover your nail for the tail of the shooting star. Because I wanted each star tail to be relatively the same size in width, I used the corner of my nail's free edge line to match up the angle at which to have one side of the tape touching.

For Step Three, you don't have to let the glitter polish dry completely before moving on.

Using your clear polish/top coat put a small dot on the point of each glitter tail, and while the clear polish is still wet set the star jewel down on top of the dot and press so the star is set in place by the clear polish. Do not worry if any extra clear polish oozes out from under the star jewel after you've pressed the gem down, because it will be covered up with the top coat later.

Step Four: laying down the top coat. This is more important if you have used a glitter polish as the tail for your Shooting Star(s), because glitter polish tends to be gritty and you want your manicure to last and not be a hindrance to everyday nail use!

A top coat will also protect those star jewels from coming off right away, so use one to two coats of your favorite top coat to keep your design lasting!

And there you go! On every finger is a shooting star to wish on! Or just admire. Especially in the sunlight. Look at those sparkly jewels and that gorgeous glitter!

Have fun with this design. Let me know if you try it out, and if so, what combination of base color/tail color you use!

Now I know these awards come with rules, but I have a confession, one of the reasons I haven't posted in the recent past is because I couldn't decide who exactly to nominate. Not because there is a lack of wonderful bloggers who deserve these awards, but because I feel there is an overabundance of bloggers who all deserve to be recognized for their blogging, but the rules of these awards limit nominations to only a select few.

Rather than have this feel like a high-school gym class with picking out individuals before others to play for a certain team, I would like to share these awards with everyone. Now while I also know that I am essentially tagging all the blogs I follow, at the same time, the only reason I notice when these blog awards get passed around is because I can find new nail blogs (and even other blogs that aren't nail related) that I have yet to have seen.

The nail blogging community is a strong community and with that comes the personal belief that each blogger and her/his site I have seen on here deserves an award for blogging, so while I am technically nominating all nail blogs I have found (and even those I have yet to find), I really wanted to write this post just to simply point out that on the right side of this blog I have a compilation of the nail blogs I have found so far.

Go now!

Check them out.

Follow them.

(One, or all if you please.)

So, if I'm never nominated for another Blogger Award again because I don't following Blog Award rules, well, I guess that's ok. But I really wanted to make a reference to all the lovely nail blogs out there that I have found so far, some that still have under 20 followers, and with the fact that I know the nail blogging community is as supportive as it is, I find this truth to be surprising.

To date, I only have up to the A's completed from the nail blogs I follow, but if you have a nail blog (or any other type of blog) that I do not follow, let me know. I will eventually have all the nail blogs I follow listed (or I hope, for the most part).Now on a separate matter, I am back to blogging. In fact, I already have three posts edited and lined up to be published on this blogging site here.

Thank you to all those people who are still following my blog (I know I lost a few, but that's understandable). And thank you to all those new followers as well. I hope you all continue to find my Blog enjoyable and informative!

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This policy is valid from 07 February 2010

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact Cyan (bluetapenails at gmail dot com).

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